Karen Hogan says federal government provided pandemic benefits and secured vaccines quickly but wasted doses.
Millions of COVID-19 vaccinations are expected to expire by the end of the year.
Auditor General Karen Hogan says the federal government failed to properly manage an oversupply of vaccines, costing about $1 billion.
While she heaped praise on the Public Health Agency and Procurement Canada for quickly getting shots into the country, the federal government didn't do a good enough job of managing the doses.
The report found between December 2020 and May 2022, about half of the 169 million doses paid for by the government made it into the arms of Canadians.
Karen Hogan also says that by May 31st of this year, the country had over 50 million extra doses that were being offered to countries in need of vaccinations.
Of that amount, just over 15 million were donated, and another 13 million expired.
The audit suggests the rest will likely expire by the end of this year if they go unused.
The analysis also looked at benefits such as the Canada Recovery benefit, the Canada Emergency Response Benefit and the Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit.
Hogan notes the programs were effective at quickly offering financial relief to individuals and employers, and without them, Canada's poverty rate would have risen from 6.4 percent to 11.6 percent.
However, she also estimates that about $4.6 billion was paid to people who were not eligible and recommends a further $27.4 billion to people and businesses should be further investigated.
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